


Better Days Have Yet to Come

by poetesmaudits



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canon Era, F/M, Post-Barricade, consolation and grief, gratuitous descriptions of 16th century french châteaux, marius centric, marius meets the courfeyrac family, marius mourns his friend's death, marius/courfeyrac is left to romantic interpretation, mentions of complicated father-son relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:14:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23714974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poetesmaudits/pseuds/poetesmaudits
Summary: A year after the fall of the barricade, Marius receives a letter inviting him to Courfeyrac's hometown in Dordogne.
Relationships: Cosette Fauchelevent/Marius Pontmercy, Courfeyrac & Marius Pontmercy
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	Better Days Have Yet to Come

**Author's Note:**

> content warning: this fic contains mentions of depressive/suicidal thoughts, panic attacks, heavy mentions of death and mourning, mentions of barricade violence, some 19th century foul, abusive language, bad father-son relationships, bad fathers and on a much lighter note, excessive descriptions of french castles, anticlerical declarations, ridiculous neoclassical, royalist names (a necessary evil) and long, tedious monologues. please take care.
> 
> courfeyrac is like godot; we await him but he never comes, hence why his name does not figure in the character tags.

When Marius wakes up and is told that he is the sole survivor of the barricade of Rue Mondétour, his only wish is to go back to sleep. He does not have the emotional capacity to deal with this piece of information, to understand the meaning and consequence of it, to even process it. He only accepts it as a universal truth and his grandfather smiles with glee while his aunt sobs quietly in the background.

He grasps in the first few months only glimpses of lucidity through days spent in a laudanum induced haze. Those are perhaps the worst times of all for only then does he sense the terrible, crushing loneliness of death. He is often sick and multiple times in those weeks his doctor (sworn to secrecy) fears still that he may not make it. However he does survive by some divine providence, and in the early days of September, he finally reaches full consciousness. It is soon thereafter that he understands the true cruelty of life—months have gone by since the fall of the barricade, Courfeyrac is dead and buried and no one else than him is left to bear witness of the horrors of those early June nights. It is the second time in his life he feels death cling to his skin in such way and he wishes it could all end, wishes he never had to wake up from his coma, wishes that he could have died on the barricade with Courfeyrac, for surely a world without him cannot exist, cannot be real, for surely there is no joy left in a world without him.

Cosette begins to visit him around this same period and immediately he hears his grandfather speak of marriage with her father. He finds some solace in her presence, for even if she cannot and will never understand the horrors that occurred on that barricade on the cursed night of the fifth to the sixth of June 1832, she listens and she mourns with him. He weeps many, many times and Cosette lets him, sitting by in case he needs her comfort, and he appreciates her understanding, so much that he remembers slowly that he has loved her and that she is still filled with love for him. He clings onto this for dear life and Cosette sees this, for slowly she edges closer, offers him small signs of affection, a touch of a finger tip on his pale, cadaverous skin, tucking a strand of over grown, sweaty hair behind his ear, a kiss on the scarred forehead, a squeeze of the hand, soft, quiet word of love and comforting.

“How can you stay by the side of someone like me?” he asks one day as she strokes his hair very gently, and she furrows her brows, though a fondness remains in her eyes, “Surely there are men much better off than me in Paris today.”

“I would not want any other man for anything in the world,” she says with a small smile playing on her lips, “You are undeniably the most handsome man I have ever seen. And besides, who else will pick up my father's lost handkerchief at the Luxembourg?”

Marius looks away, blushing lightly, and Cosette pinches his ear affectionately.

When he is able to stand and walk, he demands that the coat he had been wearing that night is cleaned as best as it can be—it had been the green one. As for the tie he had around the head, he keeps it as such, filthy and hardened with his own dried, brown blood. The fabric had once been soft and clean around Courfeyrac's neck, and there are days where Marius spends hours holding it in his hands, weeping, imagining his friend, sometimes maybe even hallucinating him. He sees him sometimes in Cosette, in a certain twinkle of the eye, in her light, merry laugh, in the way her fingers comb through his thick, black hair with an exasperated fondness. She is the only person with whom he can talk of Courfeyrac, his most intimate friend, with whom he can talk of all les Amis de l'ABC, of Éponine, of Gavroche, of old père Mabeuf and she listens with tears in her own eyes—it is proof to him that those people really did exist and were not simply a figment of his own imagination. It happens that he dreams that the barricade was simply a nightmare and that it never did happen, and that when he wakes, Courfeyrac is there to console him—when he wakes a second time and sees that he is alone and in his childhood bed at his grandfather's house in the Marais, he weeps harder than ever.

He marries Cosette in February 1833 and although it is supposed to be a joyful, happy day, death and mourning follow them to the altar. Cosette's father is sick and could not walk her down the aisle, and he sees that she is upset by this fact. He tries to make up for it by being as cheerful as he possibly can, but it is difficult when one is still grieving and chased by one's own ghosts. He has swapped his black waistcoat and black cravat for a very elegant white attire that Courfeyrac would have liked very much, he is certain of it.

There is little time after the wedding for Marius's own mourning, and soon he sees that it is Cosette who is plagued with a certain sadness that never quite leaves her eyes. Her father has been truthful to him by confessing a most abominable secret and it has been agreed he is not to come back to their house. He knows all too well he is partly responsible for the unshed tears in her eyes, but he reminds himself that it is in the best interests of his wife. He knows he is not being as good a husband as he should be and often he convinces himself that Cosette would have been happier with another, more cheerful and gentler man—it is too late now however, she is his and he is hers irreversibly. He loves her still of course and for nothing in the world would he want her gone, she is his only anchor and he does love her so much his heart might burst, but the irremediable sadness and guilt remain heavy in his chest. Marius tries to find closure by discovering the stranger who has helped him escape the barricade, for if he is not alone then surely there is another man who can understand him, who has witnessed the horrors he has witnessed, who has felt the fear and dread he has felt, who has seen death as he has seen it. He seeks discreet information, but most people who come to his home with so called news are charlatans—he gives them money nevertheless. Cosette grows sadder with every passing day and Marius ignores it as much as possible. He hopes it will go away with time, when she will understand she no longer needs her father, but it takes longer than he anticipated. Perhaps his lack of a father figure in his own life makes it that it is difficult for him to understand her sentiments.

Only when the devastating truth is revealed months later does he feel the terrible guilt eat him alive. By then it is too late.

-

On the 10th of June 1833, four days after the terrible anniversary which he has been secretly anticipating and counting down and which he spends grieving, much to his grandfather's irritation, a letter arrives to his name in a feminine handwriting he does not know and yet to which there is a certain familiarity which he cannot quite put a finger on.

It is a letter that begins politely, with an _À l'intention de Monsieur le Baron Pontmercy_ scrawled elegantly and with a certain roundness around the Es, Ls, and As. The letter informs him that soon it will be a year since the fall of the barricade of Rue Mondétour, that this date will also symbolise one year since the death of their dearest brother gone too soon, that this year has been a most harrowing one for all of them and that they have come at last to write this letter in the hope to find some kind of closure for their brother's death, as he has died on the barricade and could not be buried in the family vault in the local church's cemetery for those reasons. They then explain that their brother was well acquainted with Monsieur le Baron and that in fact they might have resided together. Only then does Marius understand who this is from and immediately his eyes fall to the bottom of the letter where the signature lies, _Madame Marie-Thérèse, Comtesse de Montuir, née de Courfeyrac_. He unintentionally gasps and drops the letter as though singed by the paper, and he feels his hand tremble as he reads the name, over and over again in this cursed black ink. He feels he is starting a panic attack and he presses his face into the palms of his hands as he lets out a few, sharp inhales that soon become high pitched sobs. Someone comes in soon after and goes fetch Cosette for him, who rushes in. She tries to understand what is wrong, but stops speaking when she sees the letter left discarded on his desk before him, and instead only strokes his back, humming softly. A domestic comes in with sweetened water and Cosette makes him drink it.

“I can't,” he manages to say through ragged breaths, “I can't, I can't, I can't.”

“It's all right, my love,” whispers Cosette. There is a long pause, where Cosette remains kneeling next to Marius's seated figure, her hand remaining on his back as a reminder that she is there for him, and eventually he manages to regain some sense as he lets out one last deep exhale and looks at his wife with red, swollen eyes.

“I'm so terribly sorry,” he says, “For expressing such emotions, for not being able to get over a death that is now one year old, for being such a terrible husband.”

Cosette scowls and stands up from her former position, readjusting her dress where it has folded awkwardly, before wrapping her arms around his shoulders; “There is nothing to apologise for, my dearest, belovedest husband,” she says very gently and with infinite kindness, “It is normal to mourn those departed too soon; you are still recovering and I cannot hold you accountable for that, can I?”

Marius does not answer and instead leans back into her arms the way a baby bird would do in its mother's wings. Cosette presses a kiss to his temple.

“Will you read the end of the letter for me?” he asks, and Cosette complies, slowly unwrapping her arms from around his shoulders and taking the letter with as much gentleness as if it had been an artifact of the greatest importance and fragility. She reads it, pauses when Marius shows signs of falling back into an attack, then finishes quietly.

Madame la Comtesse de Montuir, Courfeyrac's sister, would like to meet Marius and invite him to the Courfeyrac abode in the south of France, for she believes that she could find some closure if only she could meet someone who knew her brother in his last moments, who had shared a part of his life and seen a side of him which she could have never seen as his sister. Although Cosette reminds him that he has the right to decline the offer, Marius knows that he needs to do this, and sets himself to writing an answer.

-

He promises to be quick. Cosette is four months pregnant with their first child and he wants to be with her as much as humanly possible. He arrives in Dordogne on the first of July and hires a carriage from Périgueux to Le Bugue, Courfeyrac's hometown.

The Courfeyrac estate is vast and slightly retreated from the town itself. They own a part of the woods and some land alongside the little château that easily looks about three hundred years old. As the carriage traverses the front gardens, Marius has no difficulty picturing a young, mischievous Courfeyrac fooling around, perhaps disturbing the gardeners in their tasks and getting in trouble for getting his clothes dirty while attempting to steal ripe pieces of fruit from the various trees. He feels almost excitement, forgetting perhaps that he has not come to visit his good friend Courfeyrac, but rather his grieving family. He is brought back down to earth when the carriage comes to a halt and a domestic takes his belongings, while another leads him indoors, in a small antechamber. There he is invited to take a seat before being left alone and Marius remains standing, observing the decorations.

The walls are pasted in a slightly out of fashion satined pink wallpaper and the ceiling and flooring have been painted white. The furniture is essentially a mixture from Louis XV and Louis XVI epochs, though there is here and there a new looking coffee table or mirror—Marius sees a ghost when he sees his reflection, and he is quick to look away. A window has been opened and the loud singing of crickets blended with the chirping of birds is the only sound that can be heard in the whole room, alongside perhaps the old ticking clock in the corner. Over the chimney hangs a painting representing a man with his two sons, and the smallest of the two is indubitably the friend Marius had known in Paris, though much smaller, much younger. Monsieur de Courfeyrac's face looks cold and austere, wearing a very royalist attire that testifies of the time's political tensions. The eldest of the two sons whom Marius has only heard of in anecdotes that usually portrayed him as a rather strict, humourless fellow, is wearing a military costume with great pride, head high and eyes looking almost contemptuously at whoever sets eyes upon him. The youngest, Courfeyrac, cannot be more than seven years old, and yet already there is a certain mirth in his eyes and a hint of a smile at the corner of his lips that announces mischief. Marius's eyes are incapable of tearing themselves away from the painting, and he only manages to turn around when the door opens and a domestic clears his throat before announcing in a clear voice; “Madame la Comtesse de Montuir.”

Marius crosses the chamber in time to see her walk in, dressed entirely in black. The domestic leaves them alone. Marius bends down with some difficulty and when she sees this, she forbids him to put himself through any unnecessary strain, and he therefore does not kiss her hand. She bears some similarities with her brother, in the shape of the face and eyes, the curve of the nose, though she looks older, both naturally and by grief.

“First of all,” she says, “I wish to thank you for coming all this way. I hope it hasn't been too tedious a task and that you will feel welcomed here, despite the deplorable circumstances.”

“I thank you for your kindness,” says Marius. Madame de Montuir sits down and invites Marius to do the same. He obliges and a brief silence settles in between the two of them. It is evident she is trying not to stare too hard at him and the same goes for him. There is a terrible sadness in her eyes that Marius can only imagine is present in his own as well and soon enough Madame de Montuir is crying in her handkerchief. Marius watches her, uncertain as to what is to be done, and feigns to stand up to fetch someone but the lady stops him and forces herself to calm down, dabbing at her great, brown eyes gently before blowing her nose.

“I'm so terribly sorry,” she sniffles, looking away, and her eyes fall on the painting that is directly facing them. She remains silent for a moment, stares at it as more silent tears fall down her cheeks, then turns her head towards him again, “You know, he was very fond of you. He sent many letters in which he spoke of your proximity and friendship, and he did say on multiple occasions that he would have loved for us to meet. I-” she takes another deep breath and again the tears are already gathering like great, salty pearls in her eyes, “I wish only that he could be here with us today.”

“I wish so too,” whispers Marius, “I loved him like a brother, maybe even more. And now I miss him so terribly much it is often too overwhelming to even think about it.”

Madame de Montuir lets out a choked sob and before Marius can react, she seizes his hand and squeezes it so tight it hurts to the point where Marius lets out a shocked gasp, and Courfeyrac's sister immediately lets go, her face flushing a crimson shade of red.

“Oh my! Please forgive me! I do not know myself anymore!” Marius holds his hand to his chest as though wounded but forgives her immediately; he knows what grief does to one's soul, he knows how easy it is for madness to creep into one's mind when someone so close as a brother is lost forever. She suddenly stands up again and offers her arm to Marius whom she has noticed limps and requires a cane; “Let us go outside, I believe fresh air will do us the greatest good. I can show you the domain. You will see, it is quite charming, the perfect place to grow as a child.”

She leads him down neoclassical, white corridors and then down a much more ancient stairway where Marius requires to hold onto the banister for dear life, before they reach the servants' quarters and exit the château through a discreet door that leads straight to the garden, which is in fact quite lovely. There is a peach and plum orchard recognisable in the distance, and a vineyard right next to it. What catches most the eye is however the typically French, classical garden with its small, square shrubbery, perfectly symmetrical paths, rose bushes, a small fountain in the centre where a cherub spits a thin yet regular jet of water. Marius sees a bench and thinks they might settle there, which is not too bad, but Madame de Montuir has other plans and takes them further away, towards the bottom of the large garden, closer to the edge of the woods. She does not ask how is he fairing and only perseveres in the heat, and this until they reach a tree in the middle of what resembles a prairie but is in fact simply an average sized patch of lawn, and she sits down in the shade. Marius in uncertain of what should he do and only sits when the countess invites him to, his left leg shaking slightly with tremours of mild pain.

“Would it be indiscreet of me to ask as to how did you acquire your injury?” she asks once Marius has settled in the grass and lets out a soft sigh of relief.

“The barricade,” he answers simply. Madame de Montuir looks down at her hands in her lap.

“I thought as much.”

It is warm outside, which is to be expected in southern France in the Summer. Marius however has not anticipated it to be this hot and he suffers considerably under his rather thick black coat, black waistcoat and linen shirt. His cravat is tied too tight and bothers him greatly, and yet it would be indecent to do as much as untighten it in front of a lady, let alone the sister of his deceased friend. So he suffers, quietly. Madame de Montuir removes her hat, revealing dark brown hair tied into an elaborate style.

“How is Paris at this time of the year?” she asks politely and Marius shakes his head.

“I don't know,” he says, which he realises probably makes him seem foolish in the lady's eyes, “It is warm, the stench of the Seine has begun to rise and spreads through the streets—it smells of sewers all through the rive gauche. But the gardens are most beautiful at this time of year, green and warm and bathed in sunlight.”

“Did you go there with my brother?” she asks.

“On occasion, yes,” replies Marius, though he remains cautious, “He often left for the Summer, though.”

She nods her head and indicates with her hand to the field they're in; “We used to come here regularly when we were younger, he and I. It was our hideaway, I guess you could say. We would sit and talk here behind the other's backs, tell each other our latest feats... he was very cheeky and often got in trouble for it, but the punishments never quelled his loud temperament and sense of adventure—I guess you saw this for yourself. Our father would always complain to the maids and sent many letters when he left for Paris, though he rarely answered. He always called Father names behind his back. The first one that comes to mind is _Monsieur Patraque_ , a clever play on words I find.”

“He used to call my landlady in Paris _Ma'ame Bougon_ ,” says Marius and Madame de Montuir laughs lightly at that. Marius then continues, “Pardon me for being indiscreet,” he says, “Did Courfeyrac not have a good relationship with your father?”

“Not quite so, no,” replies the lady, “Mostly for political reasons. Father is a royalist, and Pierre-Alexandre, well... you know. Father always reproached him to be too frivolous, and when he left for Paris, I often heard him loudly complain about how he was hosting the entire city in his rooms and was spending more money on clothes than on the rent.”

“That is a bit excessive,” replies Marius, and the countess agrees.

“You shall meet him tonight, along with Mother, my husband and my sister Justine, who has left the convent for the Summer to visit—ah, she did not leave on good terms with Pierre-Alexandre, you know. His death really impacted her a lot... it impacted us all, especially our parents, but Justine... poor, poor Justine.”

Marius does not dare ask.

Monsieur and Madame de Courfeyrac had, as Marius understood from Courfeyrac's complicated explanations, a total of six children—two sons and four daughters. The eldest was a boy, Philippe-Auguste, then came the four sisters, Justine, Marie-Thérèse, and the twins Louise and Henriette. Courfeyrac was the youngest and was named Pierre-Alexandre, a name which he had always refused to go by, privileging instead his simple Courfeyrac, on pretenses that his name was his royalist parents' most abhorrent creation. Marius had to disagree, for certainly Philippe-Auguste was far worse a name for a republican.

In addition to this, the Courfeyracs were pious people who had always called themselves good Catholics (hence the name Marie-Thérèse, hence Justine being a nun), who had brought up all six of their children in religion, had gone to mass every Sunday morning, got a priest to teach their sons Latin and Greek, gave a modest sum of money once a year to the orphanage of Bergerac to give themselves good conscience, etc. Marius could only imagine it must have therefore come to them as quite a shock when Courfeyrac declared himself fervently anticlerical—his friend had told him about it in a letter one Summer, how his father refused to break bread with him and have supper at the same table as his after he announced loud and clear at a formal dinner party, in front of all the royalist and very much Catholic guests, that God was nothing more than the most wonderful fictitious character man had ever invented. It had made Marius laugh in the loneliness of his small room as he pictured the scene.

He is brutally brought back to reality and the green field they're sitting in when Madame de Montuir speaks again, quietly, “What kind of a man was he with his friends?”

There are a thousand different answers to that question, and Marius isn't certain how to approach it, so he tries to be as truthful as possible all while depicting his friend in the best possible light, for evidently the lady was seeking solace more than anything else. She would not care to hear about her brother's romantic conquests and his prouesse with the Parisian ladies, so he instead tells her how generous and good a man he was, how kind, how passionate, how dedicated he was, how nice he had always been to Marius even when Marius was not always the most bearable human being, and it seems to please her, for she smiles and asks for anecdotes. Marius tries to think of those that are not sad and will not make him or her weep, manages to unearth a few—the one time they had taken in a dog, the other time Courfeyrac had agreed that Grantaire his painter friend paint both he and Marius together in a most domestic scene that almost verged on indecency in Marius's humble opinion, but was merely funny in Courfeyrac's own, the one time they had gone on a journey in Provence and ended stranded in a small shack for it had rained torrents the entire time they were there, or even that one time Courfeyrac had insisted Marius required new clothes and refused to be seen publicly with him looking like one of his other friends' fellow poets, Jehan Prouvaire. Marius skillfully avoids any mention of les Amis de l'ABC and in general anything related to politics; he presumes Courfeyrac's sister is a royalist and he does not want to cause a crisis or any unnecessary tensions in between them. She does not ask about it either and he is grateful for it. When he is finished, she is laughing despite the tears pouring down her cheeks again, and she rubs them away with her embroidered handkerchief.

“Thank you,” she says, and they sit in silence for a while. The air is dry and hot and it is becoming considerably more difficult for Marius to breathe with all his layers of black clothes on. He eventually excuses himself and untightens his cravat and removes his coat, and Madame de Montuir chastises him for waiting this long. The cicadas and crickets are loud in the field and especially in the tree above their heads, and it is a pleasant noise, for it allows them not to sit in an uncomfortable silence. Eventually Madame de Montuir stands up and brushes rogue blades of grass that stick to the fabric of her dress and then offers her arm to help Marius up, but he takes it only once he is standing.

“Where are we going?” he dares ask.

“I would like to show you the rest of the domain, if you do not mind,” she answers. Marius doesn't know if his leg will allow it for too long but he accepts nevertheless.

They head back towards the classical garden but take a different path, lounging a small river by the woods that offers some semblance of coolness. Madame informs him that she used to come here with Courfeyrac and the twins when they were younger to try and catch fireflies or water spiders, or simply to dip their feet in when it was unbearably hot. Marius imagines a younger Courfeyrac in every place he lays eyes on, roaming the fields in nothing but a white shirt and beige trousers, waistcoat open and hair a happy mess of disheveled curls, his skin more tanned from hours spent out in the sun frolicking with his siblings, lounging under the trees, stealing juicy plums from the orchard, removing leaches from his ankles after dipping his feet in the river for too long, playing games, resting, sitting, lying, running, and for a moment Marius forgets that Courfeyrac has been dead for a little over a year now.

They reach the classical garden. Madame de Montuir goes to the fountain and dips her fingers in the water before flicking them in her face for some freshness, and then does the same to Marius without his permission. She apologises immediately thereafter, having forgotten herself for the second time that day. Marius tells her it is fine and that he doesn't mind, and then asks if they may sit down for a bit on the bench, for his leg hurts.

“Of course, of course,” she says helping him sit, “You must not apologise for this, please.” she sits next to him and then says, “And really you do not have to call me Madame de Montuir all the time, please call me Marie-Thérèse. I know well we are not friends, far from this, but I would rather for us to be more intimate if we are going to be talking about those most beloved to us and grieve them.”

“All right,” replies he, “Then you may call me Marius.”

She tries the name on her tongue and the lilt, the accent is of course the same as Courfeyrac's. It crushes his heart into a thousand pieces even though really he thinks it should not, and he instead forces an affable smile that must have looked rather false, for Marie-Thérèse notices it and asks if his leg is feeling better. It does not really, but Marius says that it does anyway. They stand up again and go back indoors, this time through the entrance that is not destined for the servants but rather for the masters of the estate. They enter a handsome, large corridor that looks as though it has been taken straight out of a history book, with cold, yellowed stone walls, and coat of arms hanging over wide doors. The contrast of temperatures in between indoors and outdoors is so violent that Marius feels as though he has stepped into an entirely other season. Soon he puts his coat back on.

Marie-Thérèse shows him the main drawing room, a large room that must have once had a very high ceiling but which has since then been renovated, most likely for economical reasons, to preserve as much heat as possible in the winter. The walls are an aggressive shade of red that was very much in fashion during the Empire (Marius would know) and many portraits of various eras, representing more or less distant Courfeyrac ancestors are hung, going from the seventeenth century to now. The biggest portrait is one of Courfeyrac's father in a royalist attire, dark hair coiffed in a similar style to that of Charles X, still as cold and austere looking as on the first portrait Marius saw when he arrived.

Marie-Thérèse then leads him to various different rooms, some being definitely less used than others judging by the state they're in (the dust reposing on the windowsills and tell-tale sheets covering some pieces of furniture), while others are decorated with the most fashionable furniture and wallpaper of the time, elegant walnut chaises, mahogany buffets, armchairs upholstered with the most ravishing cloth, everything made by the best carpenters in Paris, all placed in a certain manner that it fits and suits the colours and atmosphere of every room. Marius sees where did Courfeyrac's obsession for beauty and taste come from, for everything in the castle is of _bon goût_.

“Would you like to see his rooms?” she asks when they have walked through almost every visitable room in the castle and Marius's left leg feels like jelly. He is uncertain whether it would be overstepping or not, but since it is she who offers, he accepts, hoping it won't cause too many surges of emotions. He has been surprisingly good at maintaining his feelings at a reasonable bay, even if his mind would not stop playing tricks on him by picturing Courfeyrac in the various rooms and chambers in all sorts of wears. The bedroom however is something so intimate and personal he is not sure how will he react, especially after having shared a room with Courfeyrac for well over a year.

The curtains are drawn and it takes a moment for Marius's eyes to adapt to the obscurity. Marie-Thérèse lights a oil lamp and still it is barely enough for Marius to see much at all. He can tell the walls are a deep shade of royalist blue and the bed is well made against one of the walls. The desk is neat and tidy—very much unlike the desk Courfeyrac had had in Paris—the chest of drawers does not have piles of worn clothes lying on it, there is no distinctive smell of tobacco in the air, no piles of books on the night stand, no dozens of different creams and lotions and perfumes and pomades resting by his mirror. The room is completely impersonal and it is visible no one has lived here, _really_ lived here in years—it is lifeless. The only evidence that someone has ever even slept in here are the tiny portraits on top a smaller table pushed in a corner of the room and which depict Courfeyrac and his siblings at various ages, alongside the painting of an adolescent Courfeyrac hanging on the wall on the opposite side of the room, facing the bed, in a frilly lace shirt and a yellow and blue attire, his hair clipped short in a fashion Marius has never known him. The small bathroom linked to his room is in very much the same state— _dead_ —and Marius rather quickly gets upset and demands to leave the chamber. Marie-Thérèse says nothing though she senses that something is wrong, and Marius suspects she knows exactly what is the matter.

“I'm sorry,” is all she can say, and Marius shakes his head.

-

Later in the evening, Monsieur and Madame de Courfeyrac come back from their errands, but do not wish to see Marius until supper. Marius finds that rather unmannerly but does not question it, and spends the evening reading a book he has taken with him, at the desk of the small guest room he was assigned for the length of his stay, as Marie-Thérèse has matters to tend and no one else is there to occupy him. However it is difficult for him to focus on anything written on the pages and he realises this when he has been rereading the same line five times in a row without even noticing. His heart aches cruelly and he wishes that Cosette could be here with him, for Courfeyrac's presence is everywhere around him, he feels it and yet he is incapable of reaching for it and leaning back into it, a ghost, an illusion more than anything else. He weeps silently and then proceeds to change into his evening wear, painstakingly slowly. He considers writing a letter to Cosette but realises that he will be home before it even reaches her and instead resigns himself to writing in his journal lines which he knows he will cross out later on. In his mind, he hopes that if there is another world, Courfeyrac is standing beside him and telling him he can survive this.

When the time for supper finally arrives, a domestic comes to fetch him in his chamber and he is led to the dining room where Monsieur and Madame are already seated, alongside Marie-Thérèse and her husband, le Comte de Montuir. Marius is seated directly opposite Monsieur de Courfeyrac, whose eyes are fixed on him with a highly intimidating intensity that presages nothing good. He resembles a man who has been struck with grief at the least expected moment in life and who as a consequence has suffered greatly from it. His hair is white and it is clear by the way his jaw is set that he is wearing false teeth. He looks terribly old and yet the glint in his eyes tells an entirely different story, reveals unspoken anger, a certain fury and desire to live far more intense than Marius has ever seen in any other man. His wife next to him looks the exact opposite; tiredness and exasperation and general sadness emanates from her in such way that one feels as though one will never know joy again when standing by her side. It is difficult for Marius to imagine that these are the people who brought his friend Courfeyrac, beacon of light and amusement, to this world, and yet the more he observes them, the more he sees the similarities in the shape of the jaw, the slope of the nose, the shape of the cheeks, the eye colour, etc.

At the end of the table sits le Comte de Montuir, a taciturn fellow with hair so black it would shine blue in daylight, giant sideburns that connect under his chin, an impressively aquiline nose, and lips suffering from a light deformity that may or may not reveal some things about his parentage. He speaks with a strong Spanish accent and Marius learns soon thereafter that _de Montuir_ is merely the francisised version of his name.

“I trust your journey to here was not too unpleasant,” says Madame de Courfeyrac with a very faint smile on her lips, and Marius nods his head.

“It was fine, thank you.”

The lady is about to ask another question but is interrupted by her husband who asks; “ _Morbleu_ , but where on earth is Justine, does she not know we are all waiting for her?”

“She is coming, father,” answers Marie-Thérèse curtly, and she is right for the woman bursts in moments later. Marius has almost forgotten that she is a nun and feels almost surprised when he sees her head covered and dressed in black—though in retrospect they are all dressed in black. She sits down next to Marius and spares him only a look, greets him and presents herself as Artémise Victorine Justine de Courfeyrac. Marius presents himself as Baron Pontmercy, which makes Monsieur de Courfeyrac scoff. His wife attempts to look apologetic and Marie-Thérèse glares.

The dinner ends up being extremely onerous. Monsieur de Courfeyrac monopolises all conversations in a very similar fashion to the way Marius's grandfather would and makes a point to be rude to their guest at every opportunity he gets. Multiple times Justine or Marie-Thérèse let out a cry of shock or indignation at his words, but he ignores everything and only lashes out at Marius more viciously. The Count of Montuir is pretty much silent and keeps his head bowed in his plate for the entire length of supper, complimenting only the cook after every dish. Madame de Courfeyrac attempts to make up for her husband's devastating behaviour by asking Marius more general questions about his situation, his work, his wife, his life, but every time his answers are interrupted by the patriarch of the house, to the point where eventually, everyone simply remains silent while listening to the elder man complain and ramble on and on about how foolish republicans are, how moronic, how idiotic creatures they make to be and how it is perhaps for the best that they have all went on to get themselves killed on the barricade, for at least that way they will no longer burden the world with their presence and barbaric, extremist, anti-monarchist speeches on so-called _freedom_ and at least they will be as useless as they were when alive, though now taking up less space. Marius feels the hurt deep in his chest and were he less polite and mannered, he believes he would have stood up in indignation and yelled at the man, grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and screamed at his face about how he could not be more wrong, how it is his own son he is talking about, before storming out of the room and go gather his belongings and leave, walk to Le Bugue if necessary and spend a night in a hostel before heading back to Paris in the morning. He feels his eyes sting with painful, hot tears. Marie-Thérèse has left the room in indignation and her husband has followed her, apologising on both their behalves, and Monsieur de Courfeyrac, in a great spurt of anger, insults his son-in-law.

“Paul-Émile that is enough!” eventually says Madame de Courfeyrac, and the man whips around to face his wife with a strong frown on his face, “Your anger and grief do not justify your behaviour, and if you are incapable of acting civil at the dinner table, I will ask you to leave.”

“I have stopped mourning my son's death before he even decided to build that damned barricade,” is his answer, and just as he is about to stand up to leave the room as his wife has advised him to do, he sits back down and looks at Marius right in the eye, “I have done my research concerning you, young man. I know of your background, I know who your father was and how your acquired your title, and I will tell you one thing and one thing only: you have the merit of being slightly more respectable than all those other fools who went off to die merrily, for at least you are not a republican and understand that some things cannot be changed—I loathed Buonaparte with my heart and soul and loathe his followers perhaps even more, but they cannot be more infamous than those whipper-snappers who worshiped Robespierre, Saint-Just, Danton and all those other runts. Did you know that my brother was guillotined during the Revolution for the sole reason that he was a priest? And my son has the audacity to venerate those who murdered him! My own son! Can you believe it? _Can_ you? Ah! The rascal, the swine! How could he do this to us, his family? How could he do this to his own father; betray me thus way? How dare he? How _dare_ he? I, who loved him and raised him in tradition, I who showed him the true values of his heritage, I who gave him life? How dares he throw it all away so meaninglessly? If only he could have _listened_ to me, to his tutors! If only he could have- if only he- if only he could have not _died_! What would I have done to him then! Throttled him, strangled him, hanged him by the feet, murdered him myself! No, let him rot in prison and see how he likes that! Ah, he was so eager to share his fate with that of the poor, I would have laughed quite a lot to see him struggle without his aristocratic privileges! He would have come back crawling on all fours, the devil! I hate him! I hate him so much for this! I would go down to hell to fetch him back if it was possible, just so I can tell him how much I hate him one last time, just so I can tell him how angry I am at him! We couldn't even bury him in the family vault because of his stupid political opinions, the Church wouldn't let it! Do you know how much it hurts to not even be able to offer your youngest son, a mere boy, a proper burial? Do you? All he got was a faceless slab at the bottom of the cemetery with all the ragamuffins and other wretches of his kind! No name, no words, no image, no mass! No one will know him in one or two generations, no one will ever remember his name, his handsome face, his voice, it will all be gone in the void that is time and we will just have to accept that! Well I cannot, I _will not_!”

There are tears in the older man's eyes and Marius stares at him with great fear and uncertainty. Madame de Courfeyrac is crying and Justine is trembling next to him. It is then only he notices the empty space next to Justine that must have once been Courfeyrac's seat, and when he tears his eyes away from the chair and looks back at Monsieur de Courfeyrac, the man collapses in his own seat and weeps, weeps with thirteen months of repressed emotions suddenly unfurling onto him like a tidal wave. Madame de Courfeyrac places a hand on his shoulder, but he swats it away and hides his red face in his handkerchief.

“Justine, why don't you show Monsieur back to his room?” says the matriarch, but again Monsieur de Courfeyrac intervenes.

“No! No! Let him stay! I have more things to say to him!”

“Father, if you are going to insult him again, we will not permit it,” says Justine while already standing up, but her father shakes his head.

“I won't. I won't,” he says, voice broken and trembling, “Just go to the little drawing room and tell Zéphirine to make some tea. I will join you in a moment.”

They leave the table despite the fact that they haven't even had dessert yet, and Justine leads Marius to the petit salon before calling for a domestic to make tea. She keeps on apologising to Marius who is too shaken to even process exactly what has just happened, and when she realises this, she stops talking and instead starts lighting candles around the room. Marius is seated on a divan that feels so comfortable it could possible swallow him whole if it wanted to, and he lets himself slip into it. His head aches, his whole mind is a painful chaos of pain, fear and sadness, and all he can hope for is that Monsieur de Courfeyrac will not come to kill him now for letting his son die on the barricade. Before he even knows it he is crying again, and he is so sick of it by now.

“I want to go home,” he whispers, and Justine turns around to look at him. She looks less like her brother than Marie-Thérèse and more like her father, although it is clear she has mostly inherited her mother's personality, like all the children de Courfeyrac Marius has had the opportunity of meeting in his twenty-three years of life. Marius knows rationally that this lady cannot be more than thirty-five, and yet she looks so much older than that. He remembers Marie-Thérèse's words from earlier and how Justine had struggled immensely with her brother's death. In the candlelight he sees her red, swollen eyes, but he decides not to comment on them, for she has the decency not to comment on his own.

“Should I send someone to fetch you a carriage?” she asks, and Marius is surprised at her question, having almost forgotten his former statement.

“No, no, worry not. It can wait till morrow.”

She goes back to lighting candles and soon after a domestic comes in and places a platter covered in fine Limoges porcelain on the table before Marius. She then goes to stand in a corner and Justine sits in a chair on the opposite side of the coffee table. No one speaks and only the regular ticking of the clock echoes across the room. Marius is almost asleep when Monsieur de Courfeyrac bursts in followed by his wife, and when he sees Marius practically lounging in the divan, he makes a bee line towards him and sits by his side.

“I would like, first of all, Monsieur,” he says rapidly, “ To apologise for my uncouth behaviour earlier on this evening, it was completely outrageous and inappropriate on my behalf. I do not know if you can ever forgive me for my words.”

Marius is emotionally exhausted and barely manages to straighten himself up and look at Courfeyrac's father with small, tired eyes from all the tears shed on that day, “I forgive you,” he simply says, and the father seems confused yet relieved and moves backwards a little bit, to offer his guest some personal space when he seems to realise how oppressively close he is sitting to him.

“Thank you, you are a good man, Monsieur Baron Pontmercy. Zéphirine, please serve us some tea.”

The domestic does as told and hands Marius a fine cup which he holds very carefully and attempts not to spill on the soft fabric of the divan. Monsieur de Courfeyrac looks considerably calmer to only minutes ago, but Marius still fears he might at any moment lash out and back into an aggressive monologue. However he does not and simply drinks his tea with a worrying serenity, as though screaming in his guest's face was all the closure he needed for his son's death. Justine still does not speak and keeps her eyes on her cup of tea; in the candlelight, dark shadows dance upon her features, only exacerbating the tenuousness of her face. They sit thus way for a short moment where perhaps all are too fearful to utter anything that might breach the momentary peacefulness in the room.

It is eventually Madame de Courfeyrac who speaks, adopting a cautious tone which she hides behind a pleasant smile.

“So, Monsieur Pontmercy, you were a good friend of Pierre-Alexandre?”

“I like to believe so, yes,” says Marius, “We got along very well. He was always good to me.”

Madame de Courfeyrac's smile is insistent and clearly she is expecting him to say more, but he finds himself to be incapable of formulating coherent sentences. None of the words which he uttered to Marie-Thérèse earlier in the afternoon come back to his mind, and an uncomfortable silence settles in the room.

“You were the one who who shared a room with him, were you not?” she then asks.

“Yes, it was me.”

Another silence.

“He was always a very generous boy,” says the mother, still with that affable smile that Marius sees begins to dim at the corner of her lips. She places her cup of tea on her lap and takes out her handkerchief to dab the moisture away from her face. Marius sees from the corner of his eyes that Monsieur de Courfeyrac is still observing him with great minuteness, and Marius is fearful that his curt answers will soon verge on outright rudeness. He feels warm despite the coolness of the room and pulls lightly at his collar with a finger. “Such a good boy,” says Madame de Courfeyrac again, before she lets out a deep breath through her nose and glances down at her lap. She then looks back at Marius and says; “It is curious that the French language has a word for a woman who loses her husband and for a man who loses his wife, and also for children who lose their parents, but has no words for parents who lose their children—is that not astounding?” she asks, and before Marius can answer she carries on, “It is almost as if... almost as if the very pain of it is so unbearable, so unimaginable that we do not want to put it into a word, as if, _if_ it is not put into words, then surely it cannot be real, it cannot happen—and yet it does. It is perhaps the greatest pain of all—you will understand this, Monsieur, when you have children of your own—there is not a thing more terrible than that of losing your child, the ball of life you have brought to this world, have loved and cherished unconditionally, and have seen grow. Losing Pierre-Alexandre...” she stops herself, rubs her forehead with her fingertips, then shakes her head; “I... I'm sorry, you must not want to hear me ramble about something as harrowing as this. I am simply happy to finally get to meet the most intimate friend of my little boy. Having you here puts a balm on my heart which I didn't know I needed for the past year or so. When Marie-Thérèse said she had found your address and wanted to invite you for dinner, I felt wary, and yet the closer the date of your arrival came, the more confident I felt that it would do me the greatest good. We share one thing in common Monsieur Pontmercy, and that is to have known and loved Pierre-Alexandre, to have spent time with him and yet seen parts of him which the other will never see. And I do not wish to know how was he when with you and his other friends, I have my suspicions, but I see bits of him in you, in your eyes and soul, as preposterous as it may seem. You bring me great solace, Monsieur.”

She has tears pouring down her cheeks again, though she does not seem so sad as to crumble the way her husband had done previously. Justine looks at her from across the space in between them with great sorrow in her eyes, like she wishes to walk to her and hold her, but for reasons and etiquettes which she must uphold in front of guests, she cannot.

“It is a great honour to finally meet you too,” says Marius, “Courfeyrac spoke of his family with great love and-”

“ _de_ Courfeyrac,” hisses Monsieur de Courfeyrac, interrupting him, and Marius is dumbstruck for a second, for adding the particle before the name made it almost foreign, alien and unassociable to the friend he had cherished so. Thusly he simply acknowledges the comment but refuses to act upon it.

“ _He_ often spoke of wanting me to meet you. As I discussed with Mar- Madame de Montuir earlier on today, it is a shame that the circumstances behind my visit here are so bleak.”

“It would have been much merrier if you had come two Summers ago, this is true,” says Madame de Courfeyrac.

They sit in a much more pleasant silence after that, though Marius still feels the patriarch's eyes upon him, and he does not dare let loose despite the pain in his shoulder that is begging to lean back into the comfort of the seat. Eventually Justine says that she wishes to go to sleep and Madame de Courfeyrac agrees that it is a good idea and she should do the same, and Monsieur de Courfeyrac picks that moment to speak up at last.

“I have only one last request before we head off to our respective quarters; please can you tell me how was he on the night... on _that_ night?”

Marius feels his heart fall deep in his guts at the words and he stares at the other man, praying this is a sinister, cruel joke, but it is not. He does not want to answer this question, he does not want to reminisce the most traumatic event of his life which is still all too vivid on most days in his mind to the point where he is incapable of even functioning correctly and is left paralysed in bed, but the supplication in the man's eyes is too intense, too pitiful, and while Madame de Courfeyrac tells Marius that he really does not have to answer, he finds himself speaking. Courfeyrac was chirpy and cheerful on the barricade, making jokes about the canons and the artillery and more bitter comments after they ruined his hat. He had been confident that they would succeed, even when no reinforcement came to their help. When it had become clear that they would all die, Courfeyrac had remained brave and had simply accepted it as a necessary duty for his country. This seems to apall the father who looks almost scandalised and ready to shout at Marius again, but he does not and so Marius continues. In truth he did not see how Courfeyrac fell, only that one moment he was standing and fighting off a guard with a saber when all his ammunitions had run out, and the second after he was on the floor, rapidly breathing and a growing bloodstain seeping through his shirt and waistcoat. By the time Marius had made it to him, he could not even speak anymore from the pain and lack of energy, and simply gave him a faint squeeze of the hand while staring at him. It had been devastating and yet there had been no time to mourn as the fighting was still happening all around them, and every second of inattention could cost you dear. He still sometimes remembers the feeling in his chest when Courfeyrac had removed his cravat and insisted on using it as a bandage for Marius's head wound, the mother hen tone he sometimes used with him with a certain exasperated fondness that had always given Marius a warm feeling in his chest, a feeling of being loved and cared for—this he omits from his narration. He finishes it simply by saying that it had been quick, that he did not suffer a great deal, that he had been brave, for this is what Monsieur de Courfeyrac, a once military man, desires to hear. Despite his son having fought against everything the man stands for, Marius sees that there is a verve of pride that gleams in his eye at his son's patriotic exploits. Perhaps he would not have been so proud had Courfeyrac lived, but this is enough for him for now to live on.

They go to bed soon after.

Marius sleeps badly. The next morning he packs his belongings and announces that he wishes to go back to Paris as soon as possible, as his wife is pregnant and needs him and, furthermore, he has business to tend to. Courfeyrac's mother coos and congratulates him and his father says nothing at all. He asks also if he may visit Courfeyrac's grave before leaving, and Marie-Thérèse tells him that she can accompany him, for they must replace the flowers anyways. Breakfast is eaten in silence as though everyone is still recovering from the emotions of the night prior and Marius believes it is for the best, for he does not believe he can speak of Courfeyrac with such reverence much longer.

After breakfast everyone wishes him a farewell and he and Marie-Thérèse take a carriage to Le Bugue to stop by the cemetery. Marie-Thérèse shows him the tomb, which indeed is faceless, sober, and beholds no inscription as to who may be lying below. Marius does feel an ache in his chest at this—the father's words echo in his brain loudly and he wishes he could do something, carve something into the stone, speak something that would miraculously make Courfeyrac's ghost appear and tell him that it is all right, that an expensive tomb is merely an act of bourgeois frivolity as Bahorel would have said, and to be buried with the poor folks suits him much better. He cannot though, and he stares only at this impersonal slab and tries to imagine Courfeyrac lying beneath it. Marie-Thérèse places flowers on the grave and makes a short, silent prayer.

They part ways after this when Marie-Thérèse tells him she wishes to walk back to the estate and orders the carriage to take him to Périgueux. Their goodbyes are brief and maybe even cold, and Marius cannot help but feel relief at the idea of finally leaving and going back home. It was a painful trip, and when he realises he has the carriage all to himself, he sighs and lies down horizontally on the seat. For now, he sleeps. 

**Author's Note:**

> courfeyrac's dad was orignally going to be decent but somehow turned into a copy-paste version of gillenormand (i don't know how to write good dads, shhh). monsieur patraque means "mister miserable", but it's also a pun because patraque sounds similar to patriarque, lol. 
> 
> this was written in the span of a day and i'm very sorry if it is rushed and uninteresting, it is mostly for myself (hence the very niche descriptions of castles and rather folkloric names) and i am throwing it out in the world without rereading it, hoping it might please someone else. thank you for reading!


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